Hall H is a cavernous, airplane hanger-like room at the east end of the convention center.  Seating up to 6500 attendees, the room hosts panels dedicated to promoting Hollywood films, particularly blockbuster tentpoles and franchises.  This year, the list of star-studded sneak previews included Ender’s Game, The Amazing Spiderman 2, Godzilla, Hunger Games: Catching Fire, X-Men: Days of Future Past, the Thor and Captain America sequels, and surprise announcements from Warner Brothers and Marvel and about the immanent team up of Superman and Batman and the title (and villain) of the next Avengers film.

The process of gaining access to the massive hall is daunting.  Every year, an increasing number of attendees line up overnight.  I spent Friday and Saturday in the hall and arrived between 4:30 and 5am on both days.  I waited in line over five hours before the room was loaded (a process taking roughly an hour), and once admitted, I managed to find a seat towards the back of the room.

The line itself demonstrates the significant power and draw of industry promotion at Comic-Con as the spectacle (and labor) of attendees waiting in line produces an increased sense of value around studios’ promotional content.  Contextualized as exclusive to Comic-Con, these advertising paratexts are distinguished from the more mundane, mediated promotion we encounter in our daily lives.  The line helps to construct this distinction by providing visible evidence of attendees’ belief that this content is worth waiting for (on both days I sat in Hall H, attendees participating in Q&A sessions professed to the panelists that the wait had been well worth it).  In order to participate in these kinds of exclusive opportunities, attendees must consent not only to the significant wait, but also to the maintenance of order and regulations–first, in the line, then, within the Hall.  The process of queuing, then, transforms attendees into docile bodies, who wait patiently and compliantly for the panels in the hall.

Two co-existing rules inform Comic-Con’s Hall H (and overall) experience, both of which are printed directly on the Comic-Con badge . First, attendees must consent to being photographed or recorded at any time and to give “Comic-Con, its agents, licensees, or assignees” the right to use their likeness for “promotional purposes.”  Second, attendees must agree not to photograph or record any prohibited material and must obtain Comic-Con’s consent for the commercial use of “permitted” photographs and recordings.  I learned about both of these rules firsthand when I recorded the introduction to the Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures panel on Saturday.

The first half of this video demonstrates the interesting phrasing of piracy warnings in Hall H.  Fans can record and disseminate everything but the studio’s footage.  This rule works to preserve the proprietary property of the studios, while suggesting that attendees should see their experiences as similarly proprietary, an exclusive reward for their own effort and commitment after a long night in line.  Optimally, attendees will “promote” their experiences in the same way that the industry promotes their products, by carefully controlling the dissemination of information.  The studios, in retaining control of their footage, also get to decide where and how it will be unveiled online, which sometimes happens simultaneously or shortly after it is screened in Hall H. Effectively, the exclusive atmosphere of Hall H, both in terms of the restrictions around filming and sharing of content, and the excitement associated with being among the first to see and the first to know, makes Comic-Con attendees into an unpaid promotional army, enthusiastically reproducing their exclusive experiences for a larger collection of consumers online and on social networks.

Though it is difficult to see in the darkened room, the second half of this video captures the moment when two large curtains drop to reveal 180 degrees of screens, a Hall H technological spectacular first introduced by Warner Brothers in 2012.  The video ends when a member of security approaches behind my seat and tells me not to record anything on the screens.  This is, of course, absurd, as the content on the screen in that moment is a widely disseminated and familiar corporate logo.  Whether this warning reflects an accurate enforcement of the regulations or an overzealous member of security, it demonstrates just how little control one has as a member of the Hall H audience.  Either comply, or be ejected.

Later, during a panel for 20th Century Fox, the moderator excitedly informed the audience that we were all going to be photographed by a company called Crowdzilla, and that the photograph would be so detailed that we would be able to locate and tag ourselves on the X-Men Facebook page.  Alongside the troubling and invasive implications of the Crowdzilla technology, this stunt invites the audience’s implicit consent to be photographed for promotional purposes (the first rule listed on the Comic-Con badge).  Framed as a fun, novel, and innocuous addition to the Hall H experience, this stunt further exploits the spectacle of the Comic-Con crowd as a vehicle for marketing purposes.  This example demonstrates a dual function of Comic-Con: on the surface, the event operates as a location for studios to market to a core audience of fans, but in the process, these same fans become part of a larger marketing paratext.

In addition to demonstrating how studios interpellate Comic-Con attendees as unpaid promotional laborers, the lines, the piracy warning, my experience with security, and the Crowdzilla stunt also suggest a deeper, ideological power imbalance in the relationship between media industries and attendees at Comic-Con.  If a corporation’s logo operates as a of signifier of its identity (however problematic that identity may be), in Hall H, these kinds of identities are protected and privileged, while individual attendees must hand those same rights over to studios and Comic-Con organizers.  The pleasures of consuming paratexts at Comic-Con are the pretense through which studios assemble a crowd that functions more usefully as a group of indistinct “fans” than as discreet individuals.  In this way, my experiences in Hall H suggest a troubling hierarchy underpinning Hollywood’s presence at Comic-Con, a hierarchy that, as the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign suggests, extends to the relationship between media industries and fans more generally.  Instead of simply playing the role of media consumers, this audience is incorporated into a hierarchy of industry production and promotion, geared towards meeting the studio’s marketing goals.  The configuration of Hall H, with studio representatives elevated and isolated on a stage before a crowd of 6500 attendees, manifests these hierarchies in real space, rendering them highly material, and by extension, visible for five days a year.

For many academics, Comic-Con provides a significant opportunity to study media audiences, as its diverse programming attracts an array of fandoms and subcultures.  But it is the massive marketing presence of the media industries (usually coded in trade and popular discourses as “Hollywood”) that makes Comic-Con a unique space in which to examine a kind of corporeal convergence culture.  In this space, many of the more troubling implications of participatory culture, fan labor, media conglomeration, and horizontal and vertical integration collide in a messy, crowded, overgrown spectacle deeply rooted in the liveness and materiality of the event itself.  Despite what seems to be an ongoing ambivalence about the viability of Comic-Con’s attendees as a demographic, Hollywood’s marketing presence defines the event for many (whether they actively seek out this promotion, or bemoan the unavoidable impact of the accompanying crowds and spectacle).

When I arrived yesterday, Comic-Con’s preview night was already underway. As I approached downtown San Diego, I saw the iconic street banners which, this year, advertised Marvel’s upcoming Captain America and Thor sequels, and, closer to the convention center, HBO’s True Blood.  In the Gaslamp Quarter, restaurants and stores were occupied by Disney, SyFy, and NBC, elaborate off-site experiences promoting Godzilla and Ender’s Game were already underway, a massive advertisement for the new SyFy show, Helix, covered the side of the Marriott Hotel, and within several minutes a masked man handed me an invitation to attend a “fan screening” of Escape Plan hosted by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Well before I even set foot in the convention center, it was clear that even the space around it had been thoroughly colonized by industry promotion.

As Alisa Perren has pointed out, Comic-Con is so incredibly multi-faceted that one can hardly imagine a universal fan experience.  However, when it comes to Hollywood promotion at Comic-Con, a kind of controlled and universal experience is exactly the goal.  Even though Comic-Con caters to an array of fans and fandoms, this promotional presence works to reshape the event, visually and discursively, as an industry space.  But what are the implications of the media industries occupying what is coded as a space for fans as opposed to an industry trade show?  How do the particular promotional strategies employed at Comic-Con seek to mine, shape, and control fan culture, just as the industry reshapes the city of San Diego in its own image?  Finally, what can Comic-Con tell us about how media consumers, more broadly, are invited to engage with the media industries, their texts, and their paratexts?  My next post, after Comic-Con, will provide an overview of the event (as I experienced it) in an attempt to explore these questions.

Writing about Comic-Con proves to be quite the challenge in 2010. With at least seventeen panels running concurrently, and a reported 126,000 people roaming the halls (and waiting in line), there is no singular Comic-Con experience. Those with an interest in movies, TV, games, toys, and of course, comic books, are all likely to find something to satisfy them, assuming they can get a ticket to the sold-out four-day gathering and score a seat at a desired panel. (After waiting almost an hour, I failed to get into Sunday’s Glee panel in the 4,200-seat Ballroom 20.)

If you read the daily coverage from various TV, film, gaming, web video, and comics outlets, you might find it hard to believe that these writers all attended the same event. I was amused to hear one television critic talk about the growing prominence of television panels (e.g., Community, White Collar) only to, shortly thereafter, read an article from indieWIRE noting the heightened presence of indie films. Indeed, as much as it desperately needs a bigger venue, it might also be time to come up with a new name. Comic-Con does not accurately capture the range and diversity of events on offer.  Perhaps a better name might be “PopCultureCon” (or if you’re a cynic, “MarketingCon”), as seemingly any media property with the potential for generating buzz is on display. In fact, perhaps the only medium with a smaller presence now than it has had in years past are comics themselves, about which I’ve written elsewhere.

I tried to sample a variety of panels during my time at the Con. On Thursday, for example, I made it inside the infamous Hall H for Sony’s Salt/Battle: Los Angeles hour. Seating about 6,500, it’s the largest room in the complex, and the place where all the major motion picture distributors screen trailers and clips from their biggest upcoming films. During the first half of the hour, Salt director Philip Noyce, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and stars Angelina Jolie and Liev Schreiber briefly chatted with the moderator and then took a handful of questions from the audience. As their portion of the hour-long panel concluded, many in the audience departed. (Apparently, Jolie trumps Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez in an alien invasion film.) The same general format was then repeated – clips were screened, moderator and/or audience asked questions, talent darted out the back.

On Friday, I checked out smaller rooms and less hyped events. One panel I attended was for NBC’s mid-season series, The Cape, a superhero-themed action show featuring David Lyons (ER) and Summer Glau (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). The company screened what seemed to be a condensed version of the pilot (which I found underwhelming and cliché-ridden), followed by a brief Q&A with the creator, producer, and key talent. Based on the lukewarm audience response, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was retooled prior to airing.

Following The Cape panel, I headed over to Room 25ABC, where I squatted for the next couple of hours, waiting for the Roger Corman/New World panel. One of the odd aspects of Comic-Con – and, in my estimation, something desperately in need of being changed – is that once you secure a space in a given room for the day, you can stay for as long as you like. If you are interested in all of the panels taking place in the room, this is a great thing. But most people are waiting for one specific panel and thus sit through several earlier panels texting, playing games on their cell phones, flipping through the Con program, etc.

It is impossible to know how many seats will open up for a given panel. (See: my being shut out from the Glee panel.) As such, I planted myself in the room hours in advance. During my time there, I sat through a panel paying tribute to “The Adams Family” of comic book artists. This was followed by a panel sponsored by the small publisher, Archaia, devoted to a comic book, Lucid, and backed by Heroes/Star Trek star Zachary Quinto. As is often the case with such panels, it is hard to know how many people are there to hear the thoughts of the creative team and how many are there just to catch a glimpse of a particular star. Though I was mainly biding time through this panel, it did produce one of my favorite moments of the Con: Quinto publicly cut off an oblivious audience member to ask what he was talking about on his cell phone. It’s nice to know that the strategies used by teachers in the classroom work equally well when employed by Mr. Spock.

I’m happy to report that my hours of waiting for Roger Corman paid off, as I landed a seat close to the front. I was able to hear him, along with Joe Dante, Sid Haig, Mary Woronov and Allan Holzman, talk about their experiences working for New World Pictures in the 1970s and 1980s. Though the panel was far too brief to allow for the kind of in-depth discussion I would have liked (and audience questions were not permitted), we nonetheless heard some amusing tales about life in the “Corman Academy.” Interestingly, the next panel to take place in the room was for the videogame Gears of War 3. Based on the behavior and composition of the audience during the New World panel, you could tell that many were waiting for the subsequent panel. I only hope that those biding their time for the next panel had their interest piqued by tales of the shooting of Piranha and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.

Did you attend Comic-Con this year – or have you in the past? I would love to hear your thoughts on this event, or on how you think it has changed over the years.